Like sinking
by rhea-elizabeth
Summary: Cora carries her fourth child to term, but there are complications shortly after the birth. ONESHOT/ M RATED FOR MAJOR DOSE OF ANGST


**I don't own Downton Abbey, neither do I own the characters. **

When Cora was eight, she was thrown from her horse whilst riding with her older brother Harold. Her mare, normally so docile, spooked and reared up, and her grip on the reins had been loose. She still remembers those moments when she felt herself tumble, those terrible seconds before she hit the ground that had seemed to last an eternity. _I am going to die_, she had thought, and had mourned in those brief moments all that she would never have or become. Her heart had leapt into her throat, her blood pounding in her ears, and she had seemed to fall forever until she hit the ground and everything went black.

Dying, she had thought when she had awoken two days later in her bed, would be a thing of terror. Those moments had been the most frightening of her life, and she had been certain that they would only be eclipsed by those moments prior to her actual death.

As it turns out, dying can be a much more sedate thing, and it is not always measured in moments, but sometimes in hours and days. Sometimes, she thinks, it is like sinking beneath the water of the ocean as she had done as a child, looking up at the world above her, hazy and out of focus. It is like that, she decides – but never resurfacing.

That she is dying is a secret they try to keep from her, as if she did not know her body more intimately than any doctor or nurse could. _The bleeding will not staunch_, she hears them whisper, and she feels it pulsing between her legs like a second heart beat, can feel the stickiness of it on her thighs and on the sheet beneath her. Her limbs feel heavy, as though they are sodden with water, and they burn hot and cold all at once. _This is dying_, she thinks vaguely, with a sort of wonderment at childhood notions being challenged. _This can be dying, as well._

The baby is crying, his voice lusty and strong, and it is that which affords her some measure of tranquility, even as Dr. Clarkson barks orders, tries to stem the bleeding between her legs. It had been a terrible, difficult birth, the baby in a poor position, and there had been a moment where the nurse had told her that the child was surely lost. _He is stronger than that,_ she thinks with a surge of validation, and if this is certainly not the best ending to a traumatic birth, in her opinion nor is it the worst.

She tilts her head on the pillow, the cover cool against her fevered cheek, and watches the snow fall out the window. She has never longed to spend time in the snow, but suddenly she wishes she were outside, beyond the walls that run hot and hold her trapped, to feel the cold breeze on her face. _It would be so sweet, to see the sky a final time._

The pain that nearly ripped her in two has settled into a dull, mindless ache, and she almost does not mind as she sees first the nurse, and then, reluctantly, Dr. Clarkson step back, watching through heavy eyelids. She struggles to focus, recognizing one feature of the good doctor – sad eyes – and then another – worried mouth in a grim line – as the others fade away.

Vaguely she is aware of a weight next to her, the feather mattress dipping, and she rolls her head to the other side to see Robert perch on the bed next to her, their son in his arms. Dimly, she wonders when he arrived, thinks that she hates for him to see her in such bloody disarray, but then she realizes how foolish such a thought is. Instead, her eyes shift to the baby, so small in the crook of Robert's elbow, and it is at that she feels her first pang of true sorrow. Her children, who would do without her, that she would not see grow, and laugh, and love, and _live_, would not see grow to women and man, would not see with their own children in their arms.

_It isn't enough time_, she thinks wearily, and she thinks she would cry if she had the strength to. _I have not had enough time with them._ She peeks at her littlest one – Richard, they had wanted to call him, and it seems so long ago that she and Robert had discussed a name when her belly had started to curve, as though from another lifetime. Her sweet Sybil is not even nearly the age Cora was when she had Mary, but she expects she will mother the baby more fondly than her other daughters will. Her heart aches at the thought, at the burden left to a mere child, to her girl. She longs to have her daughters brought to her, so that she may kiss their brows, feel the smoothness of their warm skin, but a stronger part of her balks at the thought of their last image of her being of a woman drained and broken, streaked with sweat and tears and blood. _Let them remember me as more than that,_ she thinks, her heart overfull.

"Please," she says, her eyes still on their newest child, and her voice is soft and coming from a thousand miles away. "I want to hold him."

It takes Dr. Clarkson and Robert both, to lift her from the bed, her muscles weak and useless. She tries to lift her arms but they stay stubbornly at her side, and at that the tears do well in her eyes, burning. _At least grant me this,_ she begs silently to God, and Robert shifts to sit behind her, her back sagging against his chest. Gently he settles the baby on her chest, his arms coming around her to support them both, a big hand cupping the back of little Richard's head where it rests just above the swell of her breast, his tiny hand resting on the slope of it.

She sighs with relief and the sound comes out thin and high, and she breathes in the scent of new life. She hopes that in some part of him, he will remember the sound of the beat of her heart, the scent of her skin and not that of the blood thick in the air. It is a fruitless wish, she knows, but she clings to it with what strength remains to her. He is another dark haired child with the look of the Levinsons, but she is so relieved to see him alive and well, snuffling lightly against her chest, that she cannot even grieve that she will never give her husband a son with his light hair and eyes.

Her body feels fluid as silk in Robert's arms, and she is glad that he holds them both tight against him, certain that if he did not hold fast that she would simply slip away and disappear into nothingness. Her head lolls back against the crook of his shoulder, too heavy to keep aloft, and the familiar smoothness of his cheek against her skin when he kisses her temple feels like velvet.

The room is quiet, the others left them to their privacy (or perhaps, she thinks vaguely, they had never been in the first place, perhaps she had imagined them), and the only sound that echoes off the walls is the small peeps her son makes.

"You will get better," Robert tells her, and she can feel his voice rumbling in his chest, against her back. She rises and falls as he breathes, and it is like the rock of the water, lulling her to sleep as it did in her childhood. She wishes a command would make it so, that she may follow the order as a good wife would, and she thinks that he has half-convinced himself that it is true, that she is not still bleeding even as he holds her. She wishes that everything did not feel quite so heavy, that it were not such a chore to keep her eyes open. _I must stay awake,_ she resolves, for she fears if she sleeps she will never again rise, and she is not ready to stop looking at her son.

"Yes," she answers her breath barely a trembling whisper against his neck. "But if I do not, remember me fondly to our boy."

His grip tightens, and his cheek when he presses it to the top of her head, his lips brushing her hair, is moist. She has only seen Robert weep several times before, she thinks, for it is not the way of the Englishmen, not the way of the Crawleys.

She had thought him so reserved when she had first come to Downton, always serious, always distant. Even now, so many years removed from what they once were, his affections are private, his emotions held tight to his chest. But his heart, she knows, is good and loving, if buried beneath the ribs of an Englishman. _He will love another woman after me, she thinks, and somehow the words comfort rather than hurt. He has loved me. He is open to love; it shall come again for him. _

The idea frightens her somewhat – imagining the difficulty in seeing children that are your husband's, and not your own. A new wife, a new Countess of Grantham would have not just Robert's young heir to accept, but three nearly grown up daughters, so that any children she bears would inherit very little. It is strange and unsettling, to think of a future to which she does not belong, to think of another lady in her place, but she is not selfish enough to think that her husband should never love again, that he should bury his heart away.

She knows enough of Robert's good heart to know that it will mend and love again, and she loves him enough to wish it so. Once such thoughts would have distressed her, brought on tears she would have fought to hide, but everything is more muted now as her life ebbs away between her thighs.

"You would not leave our children," he tells her, and it is more plea than order despite the steadiness of his voice, and she closes her eyes, memorizing the feel of her son breathing against her chest, of the solid presence behind her. She breathes in, the sound ragged, and he always smells of smoke of cigars and fresh cologne, and it is a far more pleasing aroma than the tang of blood. "Nor me."

"You will love them for us both," she answers, and the press of Robert's cheek against hers is as much an attempt to decipher her words as a gesture of affection. It is her sole comfort, to leave her children in the care of a man who loves them so deeply, who takes to fatherhood so well. His hands at the back of Richard's head and along his tiny spine are sure, steady, familiar. Had that not been the reason she had grown to love him even more, it that possible? How could she not, when she saw him with their girls, with a softness she had not known him to possess in those days before they built their family? "And you shall heal," she tells him softly, and with his face so close, she can see him wince.

"Don't _speak_ like that," he says, his voice dropping to a confidante's near whisper, though they and their son are alone in the room. "Don't you _dare_ say goodbye."

The sound of his voice is soothing, the deep rumbles against her back, his breath warm against her cheek, but still, her limbs tingle with a fierce cold. The fire is stoked high and the windows are closed against the snow, and she wonders that she had wanted, just moments ago, to be outside in the cold. _Why would I wish such a thing?_ She wonders vaguely, and she shivers. _I feel as though I shall never be warm again._

Robert holds her and Richard close, his arms tight and skin warm though she freezes, as if that were enough to keep them all tethered. Her sadness flutters like a bird in her chest when she remembers the months spent so long ago in distant courtesy, before they had learned to love each other, to know one another. She tilts her face as best she can, and he takes her cue and dips his head to kiss her mouth, and it is enough to make her want to weep again.

"I have to," she murmurs, her cheek against the crook of his shoulder, and the iciness in her legs that sends stabbing pins and needles throughout her body starts feeling numbing, instead. _Like sinking_, she thinks, into the waters she knew so well, but at the peak of winter, or like the ice baths her nanny would make her take when she was flush with fever as a child. "Are you not tired?" she mumbles; Robert's arm cuts around her middle, over Richard's back, not merely holding the baby to her but holding her upright, as well.

"No," he answers, his voice stubborn and his lips moving against her hair.

"Oh," she responds, head thick and cloudy. "_I_ am."

"I would prefer you stay awake, Cora," he tells her, his voice strange-sounding, and he holds her closer still. Though it can be measured in hours and days, she thinks for all her sorrow and for all that she aches to stay with her children and their father, there is a dark peace to this sort of death despite it all.

Against her, Richard begins to fuss, and Cora shushes him with a soft breath that comes out like a gasp (or perhaps she meant it as a gasp, the sounds and sensations all run together), and wishes that she could do more.

"As would I, my love," she answers honestly with a shaky smile, and she listens to the steady beat of Robert's heart against her back, thudding like a drum, powerful and strong. She imagines it sending blood throughout his body, keeping him alive, and hopes he will not let it turn to stone.

**Let me know what you think, Nevis xx**


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